


00:00:00

by wanderlustlover



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: 1 Million Words, M/M, Pre-Slash, Prequel, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 17:57:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t notice until it’s too late, and even though more than seventy-five percent of the world would boggle at the notion of it, it’s not like they could blame him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	00:00:00

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alemara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alemara/gifts).



> **Tumblr prompt:** In a universe where everyone is born with numbers on their wrists counting down to when they'll meet their soulmate, send me 00:00:00 for my muses reaction to their numbers hitting zero when they meet yours.
> 
> *
> 
>  
> 
> _This ended up more an alternate-universe prequel of sorts of thing for the beginning of H50 thrust into a world with these constraints/details on it as well._

He doesn’t notice until it’s too late, and even though more than seventy-five percent of the world would boggle at the notion of it, it’s not like they could blame him. The last twenty-four hours have been a blur of not noting a lot of things because they weren’t as important as other things he needed to be hyper vigilant about. 

Like the perfect slant of the sunshine through the palm trees, or the way the air smells exactly like ocean from those occasional dreams he still can’t shake two decades later. The way everyone was apologetic at the funeral, but no one was so extremely shook up as to allude to the fact his father’s behavior, even among his colleagues, had ever altered itself again. That he’d ever done more than live, and die, alone. 

Every rifle blast of the three-volley salute echoing the blast of the shot heard through his phone.

The words his father said. The debt he owed to the bastard who blew out his brains out. 

For making it even more personal than every other day in the last five years. 

So maybe Steve didn’t notice that the numbers on his wrist had counted down to zero until he was alone, in that god forsaken empty house that still smells of the dried blood coating it, in the upstairs shower, last used by his father, likely in the last few days or week, reaching for the soap and catching the perfect curve of six zeros on the inside of his wrist. 

It’s not like he didn’t know it would be this year. Somewhere in the fall of his thirty-fourth year. He figured that out in his late teens, when he hated the notion of anyone ever having the right to dictate his future without his say again. And he abandoned and rejected even that behind the band of an expensive, and far more useful, Kobold Black Ops Crono before six years had even passed that. He hadn’t the foggiest idea if it had been today. Or yesterday. Or two weeks ago. 

The odd notion creeping through his skin, like the another nesting unwelcome invader. Like Jameson’s transparent desperation and manipulation. And William’s mismanagement of Hawaiian law enforcement, his father’s case and the idea Steve even gave a damn after he rolled right over the man. Things he didn’t care about, but that played through his head. Puzzle pieces slotting in and out of usefulness. Details on a war board he kept shifting around testing.

Where he could count on about two dozen names for the people who’d been around him before getting on plane yesterday, but he couldn’t even hazard a guess how many hundred people he’d walked by today even no less the ones he’d talked to for a second between the base, Pearl Harbor, the funeral, even the places he stopped to eat. It’s not like he even cares, though, right? 

Even as it shoves like a glass shade embedding, in whatever available skin there is, at terminal velocity from a window exploding, a bamboo sliver sliding under a nail in the first, easiest part of torture. He finishes his shower while it gnaws at the end of his day, the recap and sort, clearing off the bed in the room that hasn’t been his in one year short of two decades. He wouldn’t even call it a guest room or a guest bed. He can’t imagine his father having guests. 

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t. It’s not like he’s immune to the entire notion. No one in their world is, even with the endless publicized debates about people choose not to stay together and some never finding each other at all, against the purists who claim there is no defense. He doesn’t care. He isn’t even going to be here long enough to do anything more than string up Hesse by his heels.

But he can’t sleep. Stares at the ceiling, unblinking. Thinking of the tales of the men in his platoon, who believed and didn’t, going over every face he can recall from the day. The week. The last two, three, five weeks. The further back he goes, the easier it is. The less options. Which keeps bringing him back to today. Or yesterday. To sideways fucked irony of the idea it might be either. 

That fate is once more a bigger rat bastard than he ever gave it credit, worse than every piece of scum he’s traced down. Choosing his father’s murder as its red carpet invitation to get a foot in the door. It’s been months since he’s even been securely on a base for more than a day, around so many people who aren’t trained soldiers who were brought in on the Hesse brothers’ case. 

The circling thought that he needs to get copies of all of Williams’ cases files tomorrow morning.

Needs everything on his father’s murder to lump in with every other detail he knows of Hesse.

But even with a plan of action, to be at the HPD as soon as it’s open to talk to the man’s Captain, grease the right hands or roll over the right heads for anything and everything he needs next on his list, he doesn’t sleep. He stares at the ceiling. Circling through that gunshot, and the spattered blood. Through, I love you, son and the riddle of the odd mix of what might as well be garage sale knick-knacks in that toolbox. 

And those numbers. The catch of six perfect zeroes on his weathered skin, unchanging, no longer counting down to some inevitable point. That he missed. Because it didn’t strike like lightening, no matter what the purists say. Or maybe it did. Maybe it’s not a person. Maybe it’s just this damned house, with the faded stars on his childhood ceiling above him and the waves in the distance. 

Sunk into his skin, like claws he can’t escape. The only thing he’s stuck in an eternal dance with.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [00:00:00](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135986) by [blueofthebay (alemara)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alemara/pseuds/blueofthebay)




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